Jennifer Burchett has traveled a winding lap that began in Indiana for a public relations degree, stopped in Connecticut for a job with ESPN, stretched around the world for mission work, and returned to Indiana for another degree and second career in emergency nursing.
After living in Connecticut working in sports broadcast productions, Burchett worked for a mission organization that supported schools or medical initiatives in different parts of the U.S., Africa and Central America.
“I had been developing a heart for social justice and serving others,” Burchett said. Her mission work, seeing her father deal with his own health issues and talking with friends and family members who were nurses helped her decide to switch careers.
“Everything I had done led me to right where I needed to be,” Burchett said.
After earning her nursing degree from Purdue University in 2012, she worked in a medical-surgical unit for four years before moving to the emergency department at Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis.
“Those four years were wonderful and really formative for me to learn how to talk to patients and how to do a good assessment,” she said.
In 2017, Burchett joined the IndyCar Medical Team, and she splits her nursing time between the hospital and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s medical center or in a 52-foot semi-trailer mobile ER that travels with the racing teams.
Even though she is in emergency nurse mode for her IndyCar Medical Team shifts, working at the speedway when it’s filled with cheering spectators has a special positive energy.
“It’s just such a joy and it’s so fun and exciting to be here,” Burchett said. “It’s really life-giving.”
Burchett has been a voice in her community as someone who has had a stretcherside view of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise in gun violence in her city.
“As nurses, we get to bear witness to a lot of the effects that gun violence has, not just on victims, but on their families and their communities, and we can speak a lot of truth to those things,” Burchett said. She leads the hospital’s active shooter drills and raises awareness about prevention and the existing laws that can be enforced.
During the pandemic, she not only cared for patients who were sick, but she also promoted the importance of vaccines and helped with a mass vaccination event at the speedway.
“Getting people vaccinated and talking about safe vaccination and the science that goes behind any vaccine before it’s rolled out was huge in that kind of campaign,” she said.
Burchett also advocates through ENA, her local Indy Roadrunners ENA chapter and the Indiana State Nurses Association for legislation addressing workplace violence.
Back in her home state for more than a decade now, Burchett continues to work part time at ESPN for Indiana Pacers games.
“It’s fun. It lets me use the other part of my brain that I’m not using on nursing,” she said.
She also volunteers for occasional mission trips, now experiencing them from a nurse’s perspective. She recalled touring a hospital in Uganda where the staff was extremely proud of the care their patients received in a setting that’s much different than her urban trauma center. Linens were dried in the sun; surgical suites were open-air; and nurses calculated drips by hand.
“They were getting phenomenal outcomes for their patients, and really low infection rates,” she said. “Now every time I hear a pump beep, although I kind of swear at it, I’m also very thankful for it.”